In 2019, after many attempts for a resolution, Atio Interactive went into liquidation. Illation assumed responsibility for supporting some of Atio’s customers, as well as providing employment to about 40% of its affected staff.

A year later, the update regarding this decision could not be more positive. Despite the challenging backdrop of Atio’s liquidation, together with the tumultuous effects of the Covid-19 pandemic (which saw many more well-established companies closing their doors), illation has managed to grow and further expand its solutions offering.

The Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown has accelerated the pace and necessity of digital transformation in South Africa across all types of business. With new technology demands, illation rose to the occasion, ensuring its customers could continue business operations as fluently as possible amid these new challenges. As customers adapted to the new normal and demanded more sophisticated solutions for remote work and learning, illation assisted its customers along the journey of digital transformation.

Joshias du Plooy, who serves at illation as head of products and business enablement services, said digital transformation within customer experience is becoming increasingly important. “Our process is to assess business requirements by analysing the demands of our customers’ customers. We then tailor our solutions specifically around our findings to ensure that the technology we implement offers demonstrable business benefits.”

Digital

He went on to add that customers are increasingly opting to turn to digital channels for transactional and administrative purposes. In this way, businesses can offer customers the option to perform actions such as orders and payments via a variety of channels, including social media and instant messaging, such as WhatsApp.

Illation believes that simplicity should be at the heart of customer service. By automating business processes, customers are empowered to help themselves through self-service options. There are various benefits to this approach. Customer service agents can dedicate more of their efforts to resolving complaints rather than facilitating time-consuming, everyday processes. Furthermore, customers gain access to service that is always available and easy to use.

In the past two years, illation has formed various partnerships with prominent Gartner-rated technology providers such as Nice, Verint, Zendesk and Avaya.

In October 2019, illation started its partnership with Avaya. At that time, the company had no customers and limited experience on the platform. Subsequently, and with the dedication of the team, illation earned Avaya Diamond Partner and Co-Delivery status. Given this rapid growth in the local market, illation is an exceedingly competitive player for delivering Avaya solutions.

Illation has also partnered with a variety of other acclaimed technology firms, serving as a key partner in South Africa. One of the most prominent partnerships is with Zendesk, the omnichannel customer service platform provider.

Partnerships

Additional partnerships include Infobip, Genii, Callbi, Flowgear, Aheeva and Verint Monet, to name a few. These partnerships have- proven vital in allowing illation to offer its customers full-spectrum customer experience solutions. Another key focus area for illation is its partnerships with local businesses, as they believe the local technology landscape has much to offer.

One of illation’s most recent achievements is its co-development of an in-house product called CLI Manager. This new CLI management tool is driven by analytics, allowing users to automate the selection of what CLI to use depending on the time of day and according to customer profiles. The solution is fully product agnostic, offering insights into outbound call campaigns based on data collected. CLI Manager assists in driving answer success rates by allowing collections and dialler teams to be in control of what is presented to the public.

Automation is a prominent aspect of CLI Manager, as users of the tool are even able to adjust workflows and rules around the usage of CLIs for outbound engagements. Real-time and historical data allows users of CLI Manager to either push data to BI dashboards or use the software’s built-in dashboards.

Illation is committed to continue facilitating digital transformation within business. “We understand that digital transformation isn’t a linear process,” said illation CEO Gert Swart. “Every company is unique. When we are working with businesses, our focus is to identify the main areas where there is a void within their digital transformation so we can address those strategic pain points.”

If you would like to learn more, please don’t hesitate to follow illation on social media, or sign up for regular updates via e-mail. Visit the illation website, or find the company on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

About illation
Illation is a South African technology company specialising in crafting state-of-the-art customer experience journeys. We pride ourselves in being more than just a technology provider, as our team includes highly skilled business analysts able to assess the impact our solutions have on the operational level within businesses. We believe in adding real business value to our customers through technology. Our solution offering caters to customer engagement, contact centre, workforce management and collaboration, as well as unified communication and back-office solutions.